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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles. See "Published Works" on the web version for citations.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Close the Crimean Peninsula

If Russia's game in Ukraine is to keep taking small bites until they are full, Ukraine needs to cope with Russia by means other than just slowing down the digestion process.

Force levels on Russia's side of the border had not changed much in recent months, Breedlove said, but U.S. military officials had observed in Russia a "stocking of important supplies, ammunition, etc, to levels that would support operations".

Inside Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists are battling Ukrainian forces, Breedlove said "we see a force that has been trained, that is led by Russian leadership, ... and is ready to do whatever mission is required of it in the Donbass (region)."

"I don’t think Mr. Putin is done in eastern Ukraine," Breedlove told reporters, and Kiev, despite Moscow's hopes, was still looking to the West for support.

You can understand why Russia likes to pretend they aren't at war with Ukraine. But why should Ukraine cooperate by limiting the war to the Donbas?

I think Russia would have trouble coping with a wider war. Blood and cash aren't limitless for Putin, whose armed forces aren't that good outside of a narrow slice of his military.

I know that Ukraine is in worse shape so doesn't want to expand ground fighting that might cause Ukraine to lose more ground faster. The prospect of even a winning long war that combines regulars, irregulars, and guerrillas to resist a Russian invasion is frightening.

So Ukraine won't expand the ground war even if Russia would have problems coping with a wider front and the resulting casualties. But since Ukraine's Crimea is such a prize for Russia, why not put it at risk if Russia's hand puppets attack in force?

If I was supreme Ukrainian commander, I'd prepare forces to strike Sevastopol naval facilities and ships in port. Ballistic missiles should be readied to strike those targets and planes should be readied and trained to use anti-ship missiles against ships in port.

These assets would be held in reserve to deter a Russian escalation while the main effort is to declare Crimea's ports closed (Ukraine still has legal sovereignty despite Russia's conquest) and plant naval mines outside the ports.

How to do this is the problem. Aerial delivery? Delivery by cruise missile or drone? Small boats at night?

On the bright side, not many would have to be delivered. Hitting a Russian warship would be a bonus. But just by having some mines in place, insurance rates would go up for any ships heading that way; and how many cruise ships would want to risk hitting a mine? So Russia would take more hits to their economy.

I have no idea if Ukraine has naval mines. If not, they should produce them.

And at least such a response demonstrates that Russia risks gains by pushing for more. The war should not be limited to Russia attacking when ready and Ukraine losing ground.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.

Of course, it is quite possible that my failure to use Facebook and Twitter has handicapped me in getting an audience. Or it may be an additional issue. I may be a blogosaur!